John 1:1-18

1 In the beginning was the Word

    and the Word was with God

    and the Word was God.

2 The Word was with God in the beginning.

3 Everything came into being through the Word,

    and without the Word

    nothing came into being.

What came into being

4     through the Word was life,

    and the life was the light for all people.

5 The light shines in the darkness,

    and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.

6 A man named John was sent from God. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning the light, so that through him everyone would believe in the light. 8 He himself wasn’t the light, but his mission was to testify concerning the light.

9 The true light that shines on all people

    was coming into the world.

10 The light was in the world,

    and the world came into being through the light,

        but the world didn’t recognize the light.

11 The light came to his own people,

    and his own people didn’t welcome him.

12 But those who did welcome him,

        those who believed in his name,

    he authorized to become God’s children,

13         born not from blood

        nor from human desire or passion,

        but born from God.

14 The Word became flesh

    and made his home among us.

We have seen his glory,

    glory like that of a father’s only son,

        full of grace and truth.

15 John testified about him, crying out, “This is the one of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me is greater than me because he existed before me.’”

16 From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace;

17     as the Law was given through Moses,

    so grace and truth came into being through Jesus Christ.

18 No one has ever seen God.

    God the only Son,

        who is at the Father’s side,

        has made God known.

The Word of God for the People of God

Thanks be to God!

In the Beginning

In the beginning, Bibles were colorful.  As a very young child, my first encounter with Holy Scripture was through a Children’s Bible, given to me by my grandparents on Easter Sunday, 1996.  The scripture readings were shortened, the book of Leviticus and the long genealogies were removed.  But in the place of words, this book had pictures.  Hand drawn, vibrant images that brought ancient words to vivid life.  In the mornings before preschool, my dad and I would sit at our dining room table, and while I struggled through a bowl of cereal, he introduced me to the Bible, with all of its vibrance and color.   

In more ways than one, the Bible is a colorful book.  While we have often treated it as a rulebook, the Bible is really a book of stories.  And these stories, the ones my dad read to me at the dining room table, are fantastic.  They are stories of liberation, of hope and courage, and especially of colorful and compelling characters.  The Bible sets this tone right away.  “In the beginning” the Bible tells us, God created the heavens and the earth.  With these words, it leads us into the realm of the mystical, and introduces us to its most colorful and compelling character.  From the Bible’s opening verses, God roars onto the page as powerful, bold, baffling, and fierce, creating everything out of nothing, striking down giants, freeing slaves, standing up for the poor, weaponizing nature itself, and turning ordinary people into heroes.  

In the beginning of my faith journey, I had ears to hear these stories.  As time passed, my perspective changed.  In high school, I more or less concluded that these stories were for children.  In my eighteen year old eyes, stories of creation in six days, of seas splitting in two, of shepherd boys facing down giants seemed fictional.  As the colorful Story Bibles of childhood were replaced by Bibles with plain white pages and stark Times New Roman font, I doubted that the vibrant stories I had heard as a child would be relevant to my life as an adult.  My future wasn’t up to God.  My future was up to me.  

In the beginning was the Word.  And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  Through him, all things were made.  And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, coming into the world as a human being called Jesus Christ.  He was fully human, and also fully God.  And in him, scripture became colorful once again.  Though I had heard the story of his birth since I was little, as I headed to college, I did not realize I had misunderstood it.  I knew the manger, I knew the wise men, I knew Mary and Joseph.  As a child, I had actually been the angel in a Christmas pageant.  I knew the Christmas story.  I did not know the Christmas story’s main character.  But as my college journey began, that character was searching for me.  

In the Spring of my Freshman year, an injury forced me to give up on my dream of playing college football.  There are worse challenges to face, but at the time, football was my whole identity, and losing football shook me to my core.  You might not relate to that specifically, but one way or another, we all know–or we will all learn–what it feels like to question our value when we can no longer be who we used to be.  Growing up, we build our self-worth on school, extracurriculars, and popularity.  When we get older, we value ourselves based on our jobs, our families, our bank accounts.  I’ve heard many people say over the years that all athletes die two deaths.  You could say that about anyone who has ever invested in something, and watched that something go away.  We retire.  We get fired or laid off.  Bank accounts fill up, and empty out.  The kids move out.  Relationships evolve, and relationships come to an end.  And when these endings come, we often feel deeply and powerfully lost.  

In the beginning of the next chapter of my faith journey, I was not thinking about God.  It was one in the morning, and as I walked back to my room after talking with my friends for hours, my mind was focused on the paper which I had not started but was due at 9:30.  I entered my dorm room, I sat down at my desk, I opened my laptop to start writing, and as I did so, I checked my email, and saw that a friend of mine had sent me a link to the Christian song “Sweetly Broken” by Jeremy Riddle.  I opened the link, and where I once was lost, I listened to the lyrics, and began to feel found.  “To the cross I look, and to the cross I cling. Of its suffering, I do drink.  Of its work I do sing. On it my Savior, both bruised and crushed. Showed that God is love and God is just. At the cross You beckon me.  You draw me gently to my knees, and I am Lost for words, so lost in love, I ‘m Sweetly broken, wholly surrendered.”

Until that morning, it had never fully clicked that the point of all those stories I heard at the dining room table had always been us.  I saw that God thought that I was worth dying for, and that in Jesus, God was bringing divine power into my life to change it for the better.  As a child, I had heard about a God who helped David defeat a terrifying giant named Goliath.  Now, in Jesus, God was helping me to face my own fears about the future.  I had heard of a God who freed the Israelites from slavery.  Now I was being set free from my past to find my future.  And I had heard of a God who created the universe with nothing but words, and as I sat in my dorm room, the Word became flesh and made his dwelling in me, creating in me a new life, with all new hopes and dreams.  The baby in the manger has come among us so that scripture’s stories, with all their vibrant color, might play out in your heart, because whether or not they happened in history, the love of Jesus Christ makes them deeply and powerfully true.  If your life seems dark, know that God’s light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.  And in the beginning of this new year, our God is making all things new.  Even us.  Even me.  Even you.  Happy New Year.  May God be with you.  Amen.